


Homecoming

by Mertiya



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, But he's best dad, Canon Compliant, Come on you know he is, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, In which Sojiro has no idea what he's doing, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 22:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: Sojiro Sakura has lost a lot of things in his life; he doesn't get close to people easily.  But once in a while, when you think you've lost something really important, you get lucky.





	Homecoming

            Sojiro hasn’t dropped a plate in years. It’s something he used to do quite a bit when he first opened a coffee shop. He was pretty clumsy, and he put in a lot of work to mitigate that during the early years; it was something to occupy himself with as he processed his grief over Wakaba and the growing fear that Futaba was slipping away from him. Now ordinary plates and mugs are as safe in his hands as a piece of priceless porcelain might be.

            When the news broadcast comes on announcing that the leader of the Phantom Thieves has committed suicide, there’s a crash. Sojiro doesn’t even know what happened until he looks down and sees a plate of curry no longer safely between his hands but lying in a welter of rice and shards on the ground. The hands are shaking, but he can’t feel them. He can’t feel much of anything, as a matter of fact. He needs to clean up; he needs to sit down.

            In the end, he hears someone telling the customers that the shop is closed, in a calm but oddly flat voice, and someone else gets him a cup of coffee and sits him down in a chair in the kitchen. He tries to focus on the warmth of it between his hands, but it seems so far away that he wonders if he let it cool off when he wasn’t paying attention. He should call Futaba, he thinks vaguely. He needs to make sure she’s all right. Yes, that’s what he needs to do. That kid—there’s nothing he can do for him now. Sojiro pushes his glasses up his nose and finds that when he tries to get up the first time, his legs won’t support him. The kitchen swims sickeningly around him, but he has to make sure his daughter is all right, even if his—even if that kid isn’t. Even if—

            _Suicide_. _No._ He wouldn’t—that quiet kid, so resolved, always moving forward in a way Sojiro didn’t think was possible. Shrugging off an unfair assault conviction, putting himself between Futaba and her abusive uncle, accompanying Sojiro to Wakaba’s grave, and holding onto his elbow when he needed support. But then, Wakaba wouldn’t have killed herself either, would she?

            Someone’s hammering at the door. “We’re closed!” Sojiro shouts, but the noise continues. He reminds himself he has to get up anyway to call Futaba—he can’t fail her again—and this time he succeeds at levering himself out of his chair. The broken plate of curry is still lying in the middle of the floor. He’ll have to do something about that after he checks on Futaba.

            Supporting himself on the counter, Sojiro manages to make his way over to the door; outside it, he glimpses someone in a black suit, hair flipped to the side in a way that seems familiar. What is Niijima-san doing here? And why is she standing sideways like that, as if she’s supporting someone taller than she is?

            Sojiro opens the door, and his heart gives a single loud thud in his ears. For a moment, he thinks it’s stopped altogether. The person Niijima is supporting is the kid. There’s blood crusted on his face, and both eyes are shiny black with bruising, but he’s unquestionably alive. His labored breathing, if nothing else, is a testament to that fact.

            “We need to get him inside,” Niijima says, and all Sojiro can do is stand to the side as she gets the kid in and sits him down in one of the booths. “I’m glad your shop was closed, I thought we’d have to sit in the car for longer.”

            “What,” Sojiro breathes, and the kid looks up at him with eyes that are faintly glassy with exhaustion or maybe something else, and manages a faint smile.

            “Sorry,” he breathes.

            “Sorry?” Sojiro repeats.

            “For worrying you.”

            “You damn brat.” Sojiro covers his face with his hands, laughing roughly. “You idiot. You’re—you’re _sorry_? Goddammit. Just sit still, okay?”

            The kid nods wearily. The broken plate of curry is still sitting squarely in the middle of the kitchen floor, and Sojiro mutters to himself as he avoids it, grabs a new plate and gets some of the curry from the pot that hasn’t been put away yet. He comes back with a cup of coffee, the curry, and some painkillers. “Are you okay?” he asks.

            It’s Niijima who answers. “He’s not in danger,” she says. “He’s had—a rough day.”

            That’s got to be the understatement of the year. As the kid picks up his spoon to eat the curry, his hand is shaking, and Sojiro can see that his whole hand is bruised and scraped, across the backs of the knuckles and around the wrists. Sojiro looks at Niijima. “Thanks,” he murmurs to her, as he watches the kid tiredly spoon curry into his mouth. He looks hungry, but he also looks as if eating pains him.

            “Keep on eye on his leg,” Niijima murmurs back. “I don’t know what they did to him, but he’s been limping pretty badly. I don’t think he has a concussion or anything, but—” she takes a deep breath. “I wish we could take him to a hospital, but I don’t think that’s possible.”

            “No _shit_.” With difficulty, Sojiro restrains from demanding how this happened to the kid and what Niijima had to do with it. She seems too quiet, too contrite, for the often-strident prosecutor for him to believe she doesn’t know what happened. “I’d better call Futaba. She’ll be frantic.”

            The kid raises his head, blinking sleepy eyes and opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, then closes it again. Niijima nods. “Don’t say anything explicit over the phone,” she cautions.

            “Yeah.” Sojiro sighs. “Ah, shit.” The kid’s head has nodded forward, and he’s started drooping into the half-finished plate of curry. “Niijima-san, if I give you the keys, can you go tell her? I need to make sure he’s going to be okay.”

            Niijima blinks at him, then follows his gaze. “Oh,” she says. “Yes, all right.”

            The kid rouses a little when Sojiro puts an awkward hand on his shoulder, gasping his way back to consciousness with a strangled shout that sounds fearful. Good thing, though, because he’s too damn tall for Sojiro to get up the stairs by himself. “Come on,” Sojiro tells him, as gently as he knows how.

            “Where are you hurt?” he asks the kid, as he gets him into the little washroom on the second floor. The kid should be in bed, but there’s still blood crusted on his knuckles and face, and that will have to be cleaned off, at least.

            “I’m okay,” the kid protests, but the next minute he’s making a pained noise from nothing more than a simple breath. “I’m bruised up, that’s all.”

            “Come on, let me take a look.” A beat of hesitation, and then the kid nods, pulling off his shirt and trousers slowly, wincing as he does so.

            Sojiro bites back an angry exclamation. There’s heavy purple bruising all down his torso and something that could be a whip weal across the center of his back, where the skin has actually split and bled a little. His left thigh is nothing but a single dark mass of mottled bruising, and there’s a bit of split skin there as well. Sojiro blinks for a moment and then feels a slow-burning anger rise inside him as he recognizes the shape of someone’s boot. His fingers flex as he imagines digging them into someone’s throat.

            “It looks worse than it is,” the kid croaks—shit, he’s _still_ trying to make Sojiro feel better?

            “Then I guess you’re not dying,” Sojiro snaps, then sighs. “Kid, just let me wash off the blood and patch you up, okay?”

            Slow, dopey-looking nod. He doesn’t say anything else as Sojiro carefully cleans off the blood, cleaning out the deeper cuts, although he makes soft, pained noises a few times. “You don’t have to be so brave, you’ve been beaten within an inch of your life,” Sojiro tells him, and the kid chuffs out a laugh, then clutches at his ribs.

            “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay.”

            “That’s my line,” Sojiro says as he puts antiseptic on the kid’s knuckles. “If I let you get into the bathtub now, you’re not going to drown, right? It might help with the pain.” The kid nods, a little vaguely, and Sojiro starts the water and helps him into it. “Do not fall asleep,” he cautions again. “I’m going to be gone for a minute or two to get you some ice, okay?”

            “Yeah,” the kid says, sinking backward with a groan. “Um, tell Futaba—” he stalls. “Tell her she did a good job,” he says finally.

            “Tell her yourself,” growls Sojiro. “And do not drown.” He hurries out of the bathroom and down into the kitchen, barely pausing to snatch some ice out of the freezer and wrap it in a towel. When he gets back, he’s relieved to see the kid still has his eyes open, even if they are starting to droop again. “Feeling any better?” he asks, and the kid looks up with a start.

            “Think so,” he yawns.

            “Soak for a minute or two, I’ll keep an eye on you.”

            He gets a nod in response to that; the kid leans back and doesn’t quite shut his eyes. The bruising is still evident on his face, and he looks smaller and younger with his curly hair wet and flattened down. At least the blood’s been cleaned off now, and his breathing has gotten a little easier, although it must still be painful.

            After maybe ten minutes, the kid starts to slip under the water, and Sojiro gently nudges him to get out. He’s barely able to stand, and Sojiro has to wrap him in a towel and help him into his room where he can set him down on the bed. By the time he finds the kid’s pajamas—neatly tucked away on the sofa—the kid’s already asleep, curled up on his side with the towel flung over him.

            “Hey, c’mon, you’ll freeze if you sleep naked,” Sojiro tells him roughly. He doesn’t want to wake the kid up again, but he manages to help him into his pajamas and tucks him into bed with the wrapped ice pack against his leg. The kid wakes up a little bit during the process, just enough to stop it from being completely impossible, but he’s clearly nodding off again as Sojiro pulls the covers up to his chin and tucks them in as if he were just a little boy instead of a rail-thin high schooler nearly four inches taller than Sojiro himself.

            Sojiro, yielding to an unusual impulse, reaches out and runs his hand gently through the kid’s hair, and then moves to leave. As he does, the kid’s eyelids flutter, and he reaches out and snags Sojiro’s sleeve, lips moving as if he’s trying to say something.

            “Go to sleep, you’ll feel better when you wake up,” Sojiro tells him, but he lets the kid pull him down and murmur in his ear in the sleepiest voice Sojiro has ever heard, “Thanks, Dad,” before collapsing back into the bed and letting his eyes shut.

            Sojiro goes downstairs, makes himself a cup of coffee, and maybe cries a little, because he has the two best damn kids in the world, and no one is ever going to take them away from him.


End file.
